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Today, we are all strongly dependent on the correct functioning of technical systems. They fail, and we become vulnerable. Disruptions due to degradation or anomalous behavior can negatively impact safety, operations, and brand name, reducing the profitability of all elements of the value chain. This can be tolerated if the link between cause and effect is understood and remedied. Anomalous behavior, which indicates systems or subsystems not acting in accordance with design intent, is a much more serious problem. It includes unwanted system responses and faults whose root cause can’t be properly diagnosed, leading to costly, and sometimes unnecessary, component replacements. The title No Fault Found: The Search for the Root Cause was developed to propose solutions to this technical and business challenge, which has become less and less acceptable to the commercial aviation industry globally.

Integrated Vehicle Health Management: Implementation and Lessons Learned is the fourth title in the IVHM series published by SAE International. This new book introduces a variety of case studies, lessons learned, and insights on what it really means to develop, implement, or manage an integrated system of systems. Integrated Vehicle Health Management: Implementation and Lessons Learned brings to the reader a wide set of hands-on stories, made possible by the contribution of twenty-three authors, who agreed to share their experience and wisdom on how new technologies are developed and put to work. This effort was again coordinated by Dr. Ian K. Jennions, Director of the IVHM Centre at Cranfield University (UK), and editor of the previous books in the series.

Although the concept of Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) can be complex in its implementation, it is essentially based upon a simple idea: the more you know about a particular machine’s ability to function, the quicker you can act to prevent malfunctioning. This rapidly developing area of engineering seeks to enable better management of both the vehicle and vehicle fleet health. Use of IVHM can improve vehicle reliability, safety, and reduce unnecessary, unscheduled maintenance through the use of diagnostic and prognosis systems that monitor data and overall vehicle health. From an initial idea by the SAE IVHM Steering Group, these books have been collaboratively written by experts from academia, research and industry, and represent the collective voice of the most qualified authorities in the field.

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) is a relatively new subject, with its roots back in the space sector of the early 1990s. Although many of the papers written around that time did not refer to it as IVHM, the fundamental principles of considering an integrated end-to-end system to monitor the overall health of the asset were clearly visible. As the subject of Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) and its associated technologies have grown up, businesses are making the transformation from selling a product to selling a service. This can be viewed as a positive disruption, as a relatively small technology breakthrough is being brought to market for a large business benefit. The sequence “sense—acquire—transfer—analyze—act “ feeds the information (processed data) on the asset’s health into the Operations or Management control center.

UAS (Unmanned aircraft system), widely known to the general public as drones, are comprised of two major system elements: an Unmanned Aircraft (UA) and a Ground Control Station (GCS). UAS have a high mishap rate when compared to manned aircraft. This high mishap rate is one of several barriers to the acceptance of UAS for more widespread usage. Better awareness of the UA real time as well as long term health situation may allow timely condition based maintenance. Vehicle health and usage are two parts of the same solution to improve vehicle safety and lifecycle costs. These can be worked on through the use of two related aircraft management methods, these are: IVHM (Integrated Vehicle Health Management) which combines diagnosis and prognosis methods to help manage aircraft health and maintenance, and FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance) systems which are mainly used to assist in pilot skill quality assurance.

In today's aircraft the diagnostic and prognostic systems play a crucial part in aircraft safety while reducing the operating and maintenance costs. Aircraft are very complex in their design and require consistent monitoring of systems to establish the overall vehicle health status. Most diagnostic systems utilize advanced algorithms (e.g. Bayesian belief networks or neural networks) which usually operate at system or sub-system level. The sub-system reasoners collect the input from components and sensors to process the data and provide the diagnostic/detection results to the flight advisory unit. Several sources of information must be taken into account when assessing the vehicle health, to accurately identify the health state in real time. These sources of information are independent system-level diagnostics that do not exchange any information/data with the surrounding systems.

The third volume in the Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) series focuses on the technology that actually supports the implementation of IVHM in real-life situations. Edited by Ian K. Jennions, Director of the IVHM Center at Cranfield University, UK, this book was written collaboratively by twenty-seven authors from industry, academia and governmental research agencies.